Magnus wrote:Conor,
I am sorry that your case has got to this point but I am sure that it is in the minority of cases as thousands of people buy property in Cyprus each year without any problems.
When you chose to deal with this developer, did you not conduct any research into their reputation or business practices? If I were going to live in a new country and deal with a private firm that I had no experience of, the first thing I would do is find out if they were reliable. I certainly wouldn't sign contracts and hand over huge amounts of cash without knowing that the firm was 100% trustworthy. Obviously this does not excuse any bad practices by the developer, but surely a degree of caution should always be exercised when dealing with large sums of money.
I understand your frustration but I think that it is a little unrealistic and unfair to brand the whole of Cyprus as 'the island of fraud' etc. While I am not sure that websites and protests are going to help, I truly wish you the best of luck and am sure that justice will be done.
To a large extent Magnus we place our trust in 'our' lawyers who we only find out are often acting for the developer as well when a problem arises so at the very time we need to be able to rely on the law we find we are a victim of it by an unscrupulous lawyer who has never heard of the concept of conflict of interest, or indeed who has decided to totally disregard it as he knows the system is suspect (to say the least).